Outsourcing: A Case Study

For the first half of my professional career, I had a rather low opinion of outsourcing. I didn’t like outsourcing mainly because my only exposure to it consisted of more then a handful of terrible customer service calls when I was in desperate need of technical support. Not only did I feel like I was tearing my hair out trying to understand what the person on the other end of the line was saying to me, I also felt like I was speaking to a wall. The support rep’s clearly didn’t ‘get’ what I was saying or needing, and it drained hours of my time and energy trying to get help that shouldn’t have taken more then 10-15 minutes. Talk about FRUSTRATING!

So for the first half of my career, I chalked outsourcing up to something that only ‘bad’ companies did when they wanted cheap labor and bad customer service. (Yes, I can be a tough critic sometimes). And I was convinced I was 100% ‘right’ about my assessment. How could I be wrong? All eight outsourced customer support calls I had experienced turned out to be a disaster. And not a little disaster, but a huge one! So for me, that was enough quantifiable ‘evidence’ that outsourcing, well, sucked. (Pardon my bluntness and language).

It wasn’t until I was overseeing a project focused on time-sensitive earnings call transcription that I began to question whether or not I could be wrong about it.

You see, it all started mainly by accident, circumstance, or divine intervention (as I like to see it). I was running a project with a business partner whose team was based out of India. At first, I was hesitant, especially considering my prior ‘judgments’ about working overseas. But when we began to work together, something happened that I hadn’t expected.

The India-based team made my team look like a bunch of lazy slackers – and trust me – we were running a tight ship!

My team quickly learned that if a file was delivered 1 minute late to the India-based team, we could expect a phone call exactly one minute after that inquiring about it. So, after a handful of 7:01 am phone calls (and me not being much of a morning person), I was both mildly irritated, exceptionally impressed, and curious if this was just an anomaly or the real deal.

As it turned out, that business partner ended up closing their doors and asked us if we wanted to take on their manager to our team. After many months of being deeply impressed (and woken up early), I couldn’t refuse this opportunity to find out first-hand if there was really something to this outsourcing thing. So that’s how team member #1 came aboard and my view of outsourcing was forever changed.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the first few months were interesting with many (now funny) stories to look back on. There were many cultural differences, approaches, and mindsets that took me quite a while to figure out. But once I ‘got it’ (things that I’ll teach you and cut years off your learning curve), it was smooth sailing and my dream team was born.

So how did we do it and why did it work?

First and foremost, we gave it a shot. Sounds pretty simple, but sometimes just the idea of trying something new is the hardest step. And in all honesty, it took some time to get up the courage to go down this road. But the motivating factor was one key thing – the potential benefits far outweighed the risks. Our biggest risk and potential loss for hiring someone that didn’t work out was comparable to less then one month minimum wage salary in the US. And the potential gain of hiring someone for that rate that did work out for us, well, the upsides were a real ‘game-changer’!

So once we made the first hire and found that he was not only working out well, but was one of our most exceptional team members, it only made sense to try again with another role, then another role, and then another.

From that point on, one employee grew to five, which then grew to ten, and then twenty and beyond. It would have grown faster and easier those first few years had we had someone to guide us through the process, which is what I’m here to do for you. We’ll cut years off your learning curve and help you get ‘the best of the best’ for your dream team starting today!